The Negotiation of Literary Dialogue in Translation: Forms of Address in Robinson Crusoe Translated into Portuguese
Focussing on the pragmatic dimension of literary dialogue in narrative fiction, this paper analyses: (a) the negotiation of power carried out by characters and the way it is relayed in the text as signalled by forms of address; and (b) the negotiation performed by the translator in order to reproduce a power relation when dealing with the cultural and social environments of the source- and the target-language texts. By analysing one hundred years of Robinson Crusoe translated into European Portuguese (189– to 1992) the paper will attempt to reveal a possible historical development of translational norms and the way in which the historical, cultural and social environments may have influenced them.
Table of contents
- Abstract
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Choice of Corpus
- 3.Problems in Studying the Translation of Forms of Address
- 4.The Brown and Gilman Model
- 5.Brief Outline of Modes of Address in Modern English and Modern Portuguese
- 5.1.The Modern English System of Modes of Address
- 5.2.Evolution of Pronominal Forms of Address in English
- 5.3.The Modern European Portuguese System of Modes of Address
- 5.4.Evolution of Pronominal Forms of Address in European Portuguese
- 5.5.Brief Historical Background: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Portugal
- 6.Hypothesis for the Analysis of the Translation of Forms of Address
- 7.Results of the Analysis
- Notes
- References
- Résumé
- Address for correspondence
The dialogue in narrative fiction includes several dimensions that may be relevant for its translation. These include the poetic, linguistic and pragmatic [ p. 32 ]dimensions. The translation of literary dialogue raises special problems, and the pragmatic dimension appears to be particularly prone to be the first to be lost or altered in translation (Ben-Shahar 1994: 197).